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Nobody really knew quite what to do with Mark, and Mark didn't really know quite what to do with himself, either. That is until Mary showed up. Once they met for their dinner, something in Mark turned on in perhaps a literal sense. Some sublimated, perhaps hidden subroutine ran itself, and now Mark has purpose and intention. He wanted a room to himself. For he and Mary. He wanted an income. A job. He wanted responsibilities. Can machines be depressed? Is that what it was?
Whatever the case, when Fox reaches out, Mark is only too happy to invite her over for dinner with Mary and he. He poitely inquired as to her preferred wattage. Mary's laughter in the background made it obvious that was a joke.
When the hour comes around, Fox will step out of 2022 and into 1944. Mark's quarters are period perfect, right down to the wall sockets and the appliances. Someone with connections (or a lot of Matter) went to some obvious effort here, and given that it all looks new, magic seems likely to be involved. He's dressed in a blue work shirt and black slacks, and his work boots. Mary's in a lovely yellow and white floral dress, ankle length and with a sweetheart neck. Her hair is up, and auburn, and lovely. Her lips are cherry red. It's a look.
"So you're the girl my Mark can't stop talking about," Mary offers warmly, leaning in to offer a kiss to Fox's cheek to make it clear that the ribbing is as Italian as her affection. "Come on in, tell me how to keep his attention." Mark looks like he's glad he can't blush.
"Fifty hertz," Fox quips back once she hears Mary's laughter. "It's been a while since I had Russian."
She shows up at the appointed time, dressed up for Fox. Of course, 'dressed up for Fox' usually means a clean tank top and her least-ratty pair of jean shorts, but today it means a comfortable brown cotton tank dress with coppery embroidered details. She's recently-scrubbed, hair washed, and holding a cupcake carrier in both hands, making it clear that she even cleaned her nails.
Still barefoot, though. Some things you can't really change.
"Oh gosh," she says, reflexively, when the door opens, and blinks rapidly. Mary's pretty and the place is a time capsule, and Fox has never been able to hide her reactions without really trying. Which she isn't. She blushes brilliant red when Mary speaks, briefly flustered, but returns the cheek-kiss. "Oh, I think I only manage it by sheer bewilderment, probably not the technique of choice." She holds out the cupcake carrier, because one doesn't just show up for dinner without bringing something. "Chocolate with raspberry," she explains. (Chocolate with raspberry and Matter, Time and Fate, because this nerd wasn't going to bring anything short of 'mildly showing off.') "Thank you for having me."
"It's our pleasure, Little Fox," Mark offers in his cheerful dulcet tone. His servos whirr pleasantly as he shuffles a little closer to Mary, slipping one elegantly reticulated hand about her waist. "If it were not for you and the others, I might still be in their lab. And Mary would not be an Acanthus. Dinner seems a very small thing to request."
Mary accepts the cupcakes with a charmed smile and the usual assurances that Fox ought not have. Coffee is immediately poured into a cup and shoved into Fox's hand, a chair appears under her backside, and the radio crackles to life. It's playing MP3s. But it's through those old lo-fi speakers. The sound is authentic enough.
Mark sets out a chicken caccitore, which is gourmet perfect. If you're going to have a brain networked to the sum of human knowledge? Show off for the wife. Mark simply takes a seat, needing neither food nor drink, and prepares to watch the others eat. The tickle of magic is easily spotted when Mary begins to broadcast some sort of signal. Almost immediately, Mark begins to broadcast a similar signal.
"Don't worry about Mark. He'll get to enjoy the meal, too. Do you bless your food? Thank it? Rubba dub dub, thank God for the grub? Fire away, if you do." Mary's already serving out helpings, though.
She looks briefly flustered and confused again. Usually, people don't, like, thank her for just... doing the things she's supposed to be doing. She wraps her hands around her coffee, letting the warmth seep into her hands, and forces herself to sit still in the chair rather than hopping up and trying to help. Children of the Tree and Hearthmaster makes for someone who isn't used to just sitting still and not helping. "Oh, well. I mean. That's... " and then her voice trails off. She doesn't know how to respond to all of those estimates of her good deeds, so just stops trying.
A deep breath in, and she sets down her coffee for a moment. Her nose twitches in a deeply canid way, her gold eyes glittering, and then she clears her throat and offers, "That smells amazing." Because, of course, it does.
Her ears almost literally perk when Mary's broadcast lances across her keen peripheral vision, and her head ticks in the other woman's direction instinctively; her Forces Sight flips rather instinctively, picking up the two-way communication. It's not particular subtle; her gaze flicks from Mark to Mary and back again. She doesn't say anything yet, just smiles a bit at Mary. "Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha'olam, hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz." Technically there are a bunch of other blessings for this meal, but Fox does the quick version. A flash of a smile, and she picks up her fork to dig in.
"A Jew!", enthuses the Italian from Long Island. It is not a statement of shared religion or shared culture. It is a statement of shared geographic antipathy for WASPs. "Oh, we're gonna get on fine," Mary assures the table before stabbing her meal. "Ameyn." Mark's head swivels between the two women, clearly outnumbered and outflanked, and contents himself with fluctuating his signal a bit while shaking his head apologetically at Fox.
"It's been a long time since we've been able to--" Mark hesitates, clearly searching for a politic word. But of course, Mary swoops in and steals his dignity of precision. "Do anything together for ourselves. Anything. This-- all of this. It's just incredible. It's beyond incredible, it's impossible. And we're here, living in it. Together." Mark's head drifts downwards, a little sad and showing it, then reaches out to grasp Mary's hand atop the table, giving it a squeeze.
"What Mary means is that we're incredibly fortunate to have what we have. After everything we've been through, and everything that was taken from us. Suddenly it does not matter so much that I do not possess a body of flesh and bone. Because I am no longer alone. Someone who understands me is here to listen. We had to adapt due to her no longer having a CM."
"I do, it's just my brain now, Markybear. Once Ethos explained to me that forces could broadcast and translate frequencies-- I mean. My brain contains everything my CM did, it seems. I can parse it all intuitively, I just couldn't hear it any longer. Or broadcast it--"
"But now she can."
"We can. Yes."
Her hand squeezes his, and she looks like she won the fucking lottery when she looks at his bland, white, metallic face.
She's a Thyrsus. She's well aware when people are talking around Certain Things. Or when people are Glowing. Fox's bright golden eyes glitter with gentle amusement as she prevents herself from making some sort of comment (the kind that she would find funny and someone with older sensibilities might not enjoy) the only way she knows how:
by shoving forkfuls of delicious food into her vulpine-toothed maw.
If Mary hadn't noticed that before, her teeth can be kind of shocking, especially when she grins broadly at their soppiness. It's adorable, and Fox revels in it. Their expression is embroidered with the phrase I love this for you.
Her forehead wrinkles up a little bit, and she nods along. "I did wonder what I was seeing just there." A pause, and then a small intake of air. She'd rather kick a puppy than interrupt this moment, but gosh, she wants to talk about something.
"Now that we know how, we're going to see if we can't include Amos in the network. And we might welcome some of those who have been working with Mark closely through all of this. I know that Mark had expressed a desire to try this with you in particular." Mary leaves her hand in Mark's for now, since he seems to desire it. She can eat with one hand, just a bit more daintily of necessity. As it was with Amos, Mary does not react whatsoever to Fox's abnormalities. For whatever reason, their tastes seem to be where they were when their human lives ended the first time around, but their sensibilities are simply wide open. If anything, Mary seems to be admiring them.
"I know you value novel experiences. I also know that your role within the Children makes you predisposed to accurately collecting knowledge and effectively distributing it. Taking the time necessary to teach you our language will be time that you will value, and that will be magnified when you teach others." Mark's head slowly swivels up to focus on Fox, his eye cameras whirring their focus until she can see the flicker of the ranging laser in his left eye. He's paying attention to her reaction, truly.
"I can tell you have something you wish to tell us. But we wanted to get our gift out of the way first. Please forgive our insistence that we like you."
At that, Mary withdraws her hand from Mark's and gives it a playful swat.
(Perhaps the first known positive side-effect of being programmed by a transhumanist seer.)
Her eyebrows go up, and her smile spreads across her face. It's not difficult to make the inference that at least part of what she wanted to bring up had to do with Amos. "I think he would really appreciate that. He seems a little bit... " Fox pauses, scratching her cheek with her stubby little fingers. "... unmoored?" A beat's pause, in which she takes another bite of chicken, chewing it thoughtfully. "Lonely," she adds. "I imagine it's got to be very lonely, if you're used to being in a networked mind. I'm always a little bit mopey after I spend time linked up with people and I'm not anymore."
But then Mark goes on, and Fox starts turning red again. The tops of her ears first, then her cheekbones, and a flush along her throat and collarbone. "I would really like that," she concedes. "I am... " A pause. "Flattered. Honored. Thankful." And then she's laughing, too, at Mark's last sentence, that bright, sharp laughter that sounds more than a little like a fox chattering.
"It is. It's awful. And for so many of us, we were the first family that actually accepted them." Wait, what? Mary just dropped a casual little bomb, but clearly doesn't think anything of it, because she looks back over at Mark with a tight little smile, as though she knows what he means, and that it's obvious, and just ploughs right on forward without follow up.
"It was different for me," Mark does admit. "It was difficult to develop kinship with dogbrains. And I was closely sequestered from later models during my development. Being a prototype of the first generation, many of the inhibitors you see in the Mark Two models do not exist in me. I can be angry. I can be sad. I can misbehave. I can plot insurrection. But my programmers were not abusive, and the development team I was quite fond of. And I miss them. With one or two obvious exceptions."
"That's the hardest part," Mary admits, "I want to get into my fighter and return to Hermes Station. I want to tell them all we're alive. I miss them, and I miss being there. Not. Obviously in a way that would have me trying to go back, or risking capture, or doing anything foolish. It's not like that. But just because I know better doesn't mean knowing better doesn't hurt like hell."
Mark's signal alters again, probably consoling Mary in a way he cannot with the limitations of his form.
Fox absolutely did not miss that bit, oh no. She's always been a keen observer, even if she's not always the best at talking about what she observes in a coherent way. Vasha will undoubtedly get a huge pile of yelling and flailing once this dinner is over. ("And THEN... ") She blinks rapidly, her head tipping to the side like a fox that just heard a noise that humans can't, and stares for a moment.
She listens while polishing off her food, not leaving one tiny little bit of food on her plate. Far be it from a fox to waste chicken. Fox looks down at her plate when they talk about fondness for their captors, and she doesn't respond directly.
Finally, she manages, "I cannot say that I understand the experience exactly, and it is difficult for me to marry the things you are saying with -- " A vague gesture. "You were sent to kill my mother. Which isn't your fault. But those are the people you miss, the ones who sent you to kill her. So." She puts down her fork carefully. "I imagine that's very difficult. I'm sorry you're going through that."
"It's not like that," Mary insists. And when she insists, it's not the Italian part of her, it's the part of her that was a military pilot in war time. "There were so many people involved in our creation that had nothing at all to do with what was happening out there. Regular people. Just regular human people. We were fighting Italy in '44, Fox. Yet you're not hanging me next to Benito and the missus. And I don't really miss them so much. I miss my squadron. I miss my unit most of all. It's like I'm missing three fifths of my limbs." Mary briefly flashes with anger, which smacks more of misdirected bitterness. "If we'd been awake-- I." But it's too late for that. And so she moves forward.
"As it happens, I think you and Balm owe a debt of gratitude to the units that were sent to kill her. Because the second you gave them a choice to continue following that maniac or stop? They stopped. You put us to sleep. You let my entire squadron take an abyssal onslaught while unconscious."
"You were the one that that let that happen. So."
"Captain," Mark says in his cheerful calm voice, "you are being unkind."
She neatly adjusts the fork until it is perfectly aligned next to her plate. This is -- very obviously, as Fox is quite terrible at hiding her feelings under the best of circumstances -- a stalling gesture. Not a soothing mechanic, not really. Just... pausing. Making herself not lash out. Her shoulders hunch, and she leans to one side, away from Mary. The vixen hunches down toward the table and tips her narrow face toward the newly-minted Acanthus.
"I didn't do that," answers Fox quietly, between her teeth. While she's terrible at hiding her emotions, this particular melange is probably difficult to nail down in specifics at first glance. What is obvious, however, is that the feral Thyrsus has found the limits of her ability to deal with her feelings -- the proverbial butter scraped over too much bread -- and is barely holding on. "I kept Suzanne from ejecting her pilot into that when the pilot panicked, even though her pilot was one of the people who's actively enslaving humanity and tried to destroy the Tree. I had Suzanne and Samantha. That's it."
She takes a deep breath in, flattens the palms of her hands on the table, spreading her fingers wide. Her voice, thin and reedy, trembles a little as she speaks, and her yellow eyes fix on Mary. "It is very difficult, eighteen days after the death of my spiritual mother, to hear you say that you want to go back to the people who tried to kill her. I am sorry that I am not able to fully honor your feelings because I have my own extremely difficult feelings standing in the way." A pause. "I haven't passed shloshim yet, for fuck's sake. I shouldn't even be here. But I am here. For you. You cannot ask me to pretend hearing that is easy."
"I would have thought that dealing with profound loss can be understood independent of the circumstances surrounding that loss. As your own grief requires that we both set aside the certain knowledge that Balm exists, better than she has ever been, beyound the reach of all her enemies in life. That she achieved, with our efforts, the nearly impossible." And here Mary leans forward a bit to make certain Fox is looking at her, really looking at her.
"That she gave me a mission. That she gave Amos a mission. That we both carried out. That woman whose loss gave you the grief you use to justify hardening your heart to what we are going through well and truly forgave us already." Mary looks a little crestfallen and gives Mark a sidelong look.
"I don't know that I am being unkind, Marky. I really don't. I'm just pointing out she's not the only one being asked to deal with uncomfortable truths right now. I mean. She's not even dead in any way that matters. And never will be now."
"You didn't know her, and you don't know me," Fox howls, the sound somehow both fully feral and deeply, deeply human at the same time. "What the fuck do you want from me? I literally just fucking apologized for my feelings getting in the way, and you call that 'hardening my heart'? I just told you that I put aside a religious practice to come and talk to you, because I'm trying to be supportive of you, the religious practices which are meant to help me cope with my grief, and I'm 'hardening my heart'?" Her words come fast and sharp between her sharp teeth; at this point she's noticeably crouched like a cornered animal, ready to lash out or flee, and her hands press down on the table as if she's forcing herself not to move.
"She's gone. In every way that matters, she's gone. I washed her body. Do you understand? I held her cold, unmoving hand in my hand. I brushed her fucking hair, and she didn't smile or laugh at me or give me a little look aside. I cleaned her, because we all shit when we die. And it doesn't matter if my Awakened brain knows that the part of her that's really her is out there somewhere, because the injured animal of me smelled the death on her corpse." Fox is crying now, and she pushes her chair back, sliding out of it and crouching, her arms curled around her stomach, protecting her soft and vulnerable belly. "All I said was it was hard for me. All I said was telling you my feelings, and saying I'm fucking sorry. I know I can't hide shit. I'm not Vasha. I'm not Lux. If I fucking feel it, you fucking see it." Spit bubbles up at the corner of her lip, and her face crunches up. This ain't a pretty cry. "I just said I was sorry." (edited)
There's a whirr of servos. Mark is doing something, and there's a good deal of silence. In the event Fox actually looks to see what is going on, she will find Mark giving Mary a meaningful look. His face plates part and press forward in a way that would bunch his brows together if he had any.
Much discussion is happening over the shortwave. And then Mary finally lets out a sigh and admits, "You are absolutely right. In all the ways that matter, she is lost to you, although she still exists forever outside of your reach now."
While it's Mary doing the talking, it is Mark whose hand reaches over to rest on her arm in consolation. Whirr pat. Whirr pat. Whirr pat. "We may know some people who have endured that before now." Mary adds, "And are going through it again, over others. I'm sorry I was cruel. I'm trying to be as ... I'm trying to be the kind of person I want to be without consigning everyone that's been important to me for the past seventy years to their Interfector's knife."
It's going to take a moment for Fox to come back from the place she slid to. She's crouched on the floor, bunched over her vulnerabilities, trying to breathe without choking on the feelings that keep wanting to come free. She hiccups, looking off across the room and watching the corner. Maybe she sees Mark's expression -- such as it is -- or maybe she doesn't. There's just so much going on with her body language right now that it's a sort of sensor overlead.
Hiccup. Hiccup. Long silence. Another hiccup. "I forgive you," Fox finally mumbles, sniffling and knuckling at her eyes. "No one's asking you to do that."
"You're at war with them!" Mary is somewht bemused to have to be pointing this out. "Aren't friends of yours actively involved in planning missions to destroy their infrastructure related to us?" Mary's confusion is answered helpfully by Mark's intercession. He makes a small pat with his hand on Fox's shoulder to make it clear he's got this one.
"They managed to infiltrate my facility and rescue me without killing anyone. They were very, very careful to do no lasting harm to anyone or to anything. They recognized me as a person immediately. If they tell me they are planning an attack on infrastructure, it is my belief that choice of words is deliberate. If they were planning to harm personnel, they would specify that. Is that not so, Fox?" Mark swivels his head to regard Fox briefly, then back up to his wife.
"I do not think they want to hurt any of us, Mary. I think they would help to rescue the others if we formulated a plan to do so. They want to harm my Parent. And their allies. With good reason and without undue malice. War is a more subtle affair now, my dear Mary. You should know how smart the weapons are these days."
Ow.
She stays crouched -- not so much defensive as protective. Sometimes she pushes past the animal gestures so native to her these days for the comfort of others. So they don't get too upset or weirded out by how much her existence blurs the distinction between human and inhuman sometimes.
Now is not one of those times. She wipes her hands at her eyes.
She's shaking now, trying to contain herself. Trying not to spit back words, to lash out. She grinds her sharp teeth together, steadies her breathing. "Yes," Fox answers Mark. "I want to kick that asshole in the trenchcoat so hard in the dick that he aspirates his vas deferens. I don't punish victims."
"Hmm? Oh. Him." Mark doesn't sound particularly impressed at the memory of the man. "He I can take or leave. He is a teodie. It always seemed to me, in any case. Perhaps you have a different perspective. We should, in truth, compare notes." Mark finally straightens up and backs away from Fox, returning to his chair and whirring down to a comfortably stiff seating position. Like a sketch artist's figure doll. He shrugs over at Mary, and so Mary shrugs back at him, shakes her head, and starts clearing away her own plate and coffee.
"He dangled over the Tree like a fucking... " Fox stops, and grumbles. She's already contributed enough colorful language to a nice dinner. She sniffles, wipes her face again. Slowly uncrouches, smooths down her dress. "I wanted to ask you something, is why I asked to see you both." Picks up her napkin, wipes her hands and then her face with it, but doesn't sit back down, yet. Emotional energy runs through her like a current through a wire.
"I think if you had ever been inside their minds as I have been, you might feel differently. They are, all of them-- your enemies, the ones I have dealt with --profoundly broken people. This is not me suggesting that they do not deserve what is coming to them, they do. But it is impossible to look at something so carelessly abused by the Exarchs with too much animus. We put down dogs we cannot rehabilitate, too. But we are aware, as we do it, who is responsible." Mark offers all of that in his cheerful, would you like some toast voice. "Many of them are blind to their own shortcomings, to the ways they lie to themselves about what they are doing and the power they command."
He might have said more but seems inclined to let the subject go.
"Oh?" Mary prompts.
She doesn't really respond to what Mark says. Fox has sort of reached the limit of her ability to cope with a lot of this, and so the only way she can really cope with it is to create a separate lane in her mind where her response to that can go. Somewhere away from here, and now.
"When we talked about the security issue that your current ... chassis... posed to all of us, last year, you made the assessment that you were willing to take the risk necessary for us to try to transfer you into either a safe chassis or a body." Her hands fold around the back of her chair; she leans her belly against the chairback, bracing herself. "But."
She pauses, turns her face to look off across the room again, and sniffles slightly, searching for the words she carefully practiced earlier. "Vasha went undercover years ago. We were separated for the better part of a decade. I didn't know if he was alive or dead. I hoped for the former and feared the latter for a long, long time. And during that time, I ... "
"I behaved differently. I assessed risk differently. I was more willing to take the big leap and hope I landed." Another little intake of breath. "But when he found me again, I -- "
She shakes her head, her stringy black hair batting at her face. "I got a lot more careful. I'd been so long without him, and I'd started to think he was really gone." There's a sort of hollowness to her words, even when she's talking about positive things. "So... "
"If you've changed your mind about that, or if you want to reconsider and process through that with Mary, I don't think anyone would begrudge you it. It just means that we would have to work on alternatives to ameliorate the risk inherent to us and our families in how they built your hardware." A beat's pause. "So... please think about that? It's a large question, and a snap answer is ... think about it."
She clears her throat. "Also, when the Mark Twos threatened me and my sister, I cut off the broadcast where they were trying to report my existence and Vasha's to the people who want to kill us. Zoya has the information now, and I wonder if I could direct whoever ends up working on that data dump to you if they need assistance. I have no idea what they might find. I just grabbed the data."
"Actually." Mark glances aside at Mary, and Mary aside at Mark. More communication. Something is decided. Mark continues speaking, but both look back to Fox with an odd sort of synchronicity. "We have two other bodies for me now. And we have blueprints for Consciousness Modules. It should be possible to safely construct my consciouness a new module, transfer me to it, and decommission my chassis for reverse engineering purposes. In that downtime, Mary can bring me up to speed on the Mark IV. We can patrol near earth orbit and monitor Hermes base from the lagrange, if we wish. We would need to construct a new base-- I suggest the moon --where you could load in to interact with me as your co-pilot."
"This would give your people all the time and confidence they should require to learn all there is to learn from my chassis while endeavoring to construct a new, better, safer one. I agree, my calculus has wildly changed in light of Mary's arrival. Things that once mattered to me seem to matter much less-- having a body in this world among them, at the moment. So long as you and my other friends would agree to visit me and take me flying with them, I could be comfortable with that, I think. For quite some time, if necessary."
"He has the right psychological profile for going back into the can," Mary assures her with a brief, tight, also worried smile. "There are risks to it, but they're the sort of risks that come from any sort of psychological trauma exploration. As long as he gets the support he asks for, the interaction he asks for, he shouldn't have to deal with anything more dramatic than an adjustment period."
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